Below are some of the Old Hound’s ideas on selecting the “best” industries to use as shippers and consignees on a model railroad. Some will no doubt disagree with some of what the Old Hound says. Think of this as running some ideas up the flag pole to see how much “buck shot” they collect.
Goals
01)The “best” industries should receive and ship a wide variety of loads in a wide variety of car types
02)However, closed cars are somewhat easier to handle since they look the same whether laoded or unloaded. Open top cars may require the use of two model cars to represent one car, one loaded and one unloaded. Removable loads can be used, but they can become a “hassle” in some cases.
03)This is a personal preference, but the Old Dog has always liked “billboard” reefers and other similar cars.
General notes
01)The Old Dog would suggest that if an industry is modeled, it should appear to be large enough to justify rail service. Nothing looks more ridiculous then a boxcar parked beside an industry that is smaller then the boxcar.
02)Note that an industry that does NOT actually need to be modeled to be a shipper or consignee on a model railroad.
a.Industries without their own spur can be served be team tracks
b.Industries can be partially modeled, say by using “flats”
c.Industries can be partially modeled by modeling only the loading and/or unloading facilities.
d.Industries that do NOT conduct their own switching can be modeled by providing a track leading to a hidden staging
Edit: moving this section to the top, since it is really the core question:
Seems like you have not quite made up your mind as to whether you are trying to summarize what you think are some good general rules of thumb in selecting industries for a freelanced layout, or whether you just want to proclaim to the world how your own preferences run.
Which is it ?
The rest of my comments is from the viewpoint of evaluating what you wrote as general ideas to help select industries for a freelanced layout.
Goals: selecting industries that take a variety of different loads is indeed a good general rule of the thumb for a model railroad. Another design goal should be to pick industries that normally would a reasonably high turnover of cars, ie be switched fairly often.
So good general traffic sources and destinations are indeed:
Interchanges of various kinds (both on layout and off layout interchange tracks, and including both car floats and industry sidings where cars are left for unmodelled/off layout plant/industry switchers)
Transload facilities of various kinds (including team tracks and harbor piers)
Maximizing the use of closed type of cars (boxcars, tank cars, closed hoppers) is also a good general rule of the thumb. Using closed cars clearly makes it easier to model loaded cars arriving, empty cars departing (or the other way around).
Even though there are several cool ways of dealing with on-layout open load handling: operating chutes for bulk loads like sand/coal, empties in/loads out paired industries back to back or two sets of cars - one set loaded, one empty - in hidden staging at industry, or devices like Dallas Model Works indu
It also may or may not support a nearby large industry.
I have built one industry made up of 4 different buildings and one crane track. It requires daily service to function.
The town has other industries and they vary according to what the modeler prefers.
My cold storage is about 2 feet long and two stories. More than enough to take 4 reefers at a time.
I use trucking to develop a way to carry the small stuff around town or in a industry. For example. That coil unloaded by the teamtrack needs to go to the coil shop to be stamped out into a part at the large industry. The coil shop has it’s own internal crane.
If I wanted to build a big coil shop with a door to actually drive a rail car into to be unloaded… well that is always a possibility when additional space opens in the future.
Well, we now know the Ole Dog’s list of givens and druthers for either a freelance layout or a really compressed adaptation of Brooklyn (the Borough, not just the Navy Yard.) Or, if building in Z scale in a surplus B52 hangar, maybe not so compressed. Since the list is very obviously HIS, I’m not going to take any potshots at any part of it.
MY givens and druthers, as can be expected, are very different:
Model the most interesting part of a secondary main line that goes from somewhere to somewhere else:
Almost anything will be able to pass through, but only cars which can logically be routed to the modeled loci will be switched out and spotted there.
Cars will be those seen (numbers and other data recorded) by the modeler. That means that most freight equipment will be basic black with white reporting marks.
Rail service will extend to facilities which had such service in the prototype places I am (approximately) modeling:
1.) Freight houses/team tracks.
2.) The sawmill and log yard at Tomikawa.
3.) Interchange tracks with the same-gauge Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo at Tomikawa.
4.) Transloads for the (narrow gauge) Kashimoto Rintetsu at Tomikawa and the Harukawa Dentetsu at Haruyama.
The Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo exists to serve two coal mines, and carries a small amount of mixed freight to the freight houses at the mining communities and one small railroad town.
The bigger coal mine originates loaded unit trains, which are interchanged at Tomikawa, vanish into the netherworld and are never seen again. Empty unit trains with identical-to-the-car-number consists roll into Tomikawa, are interchanged with the TTT and make their way back to the mine…
There is also provision to live load open top cars for loose-car coal traffic. They get emptied in staging.
I am much more interested in capturing the traffic intensity of the prototype than I am
Old Dog…interesting points, some of which have been put forth over the years regarding team tracks, loading facilities only for larger ‘off-layout’ industries, and so forth. But…if it is the modeler’s goal to model a prototype - that includes operations and industry selection. Some liberties might be in order of course to provide enough traffic for an ops session and such, or to fill that ‘gotta have’ urge.
For example, I model a branch of the C&O in a modest space (the actual length of the modeled portion is roughly 1/3 of the prototype) which was known to have 3 coal mine tipples, a team track and one or more spurs serving unknown purposes. All 3 tipples are modeled, the team track and one additional spur included. To fill that one spur an industry from elsewhere was ‘transported’ to provide a reason for the known variety on the branch. Does this provide enough traffic and fun - you bet. All known trains on the line are modeled (2 coal mine runs, 2 mixed frieght locals), plus a few trains are modeled on the mainline from staging to provide more variety in car mix.
Whats to be learned from this? The prototype we are trying to model generally has more than enough variety to satisfy - including operations, car mix and industry selection.
A busy siding on my layout will feature two tanneries – an interesting industry because they tended to get their loads in boxcars of a full generation older than the rest of the layout. In the late 1960s they got hides in wood outside braced boxcars.
Another industry made (and still makes) plastic bags. This is a good destination for ACF center flo covered hoppers. The unloading area (steel boxes with hose connections, protected from errant drivers by large steel tubes painted yellow filled with concrete buried in the ground) was across the street from the industry itself. I may not model the building - have not decided yet.
Just a quick throught, while a tannery would not fit in to my concept, they are interesting industries to consider. In looking over old maps of NW PA, it appears that almost every town at least one.
In addition to raw hides, a tannery would use salt, bate, tannin (say hemlock or oak bark), and probably some items the Old Dog has overlooked.
For wharves/floats you have to serve a navigable waterway. When you start looking at it, that’s a very, very, very limited part of the country.
Billboard reefers are also a very limited in that they are only applicable before the mid 1930’s, which modeled by a relatively small number of modelers.
While an interchange is very, very useful addition to any layout, I would suggest thinking of it more as a type of “staging yard” rather than an industry. Slightly different concept, gives you a wider variety of options.
What wasn’t mentioned is the role that industry selection in defining the “mood” of your layout. Selecting representative industries of your area provides an immediate tie in to the locale. A lot of people like many small industries and a many people seem to like one big industry with many spots. The net is really a wash, either way you can have the same number of spots.
Bulk chemicals and coal. In fact, in the steam era, nearly every industry would have gotten coal…even many that didn’t ship anything by rail. It took me a while to realize this, until I started reading the RPI site’s industrial sections and started noticing records of industries that shipped 1 carload (scrap,I bet) but received 350 carloads of coal in a year.
I like this tannery idea. Picking a regional industry is a great idea. Sometimes you can be surprised by what a search through old records turns up.
